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Let's start with the good news. On average, any new car you buy in the US today will be 43 percent cleaner than any average new car in 1998. Here's some more good news, for Korea anyway, Hyundai-Kia has been named the cleanest automaker in the latest study by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), which looked at 2013 model year vehicles sold between October 2012 and September 2013 from the top eight automakers (by volume). The bad news? The big three Detroit automakers are, on average, still

Reports that the leaking of a certain type of air-conditioning fluid used in electric vehicles may help cause global warming may be a bit of hot air. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is addressing stories saying that HFC-134a, also known as R-134a, may nullify the benefits of driving electric because of its potential effect on the ozone. The UCS debunks those stories.

Plug-in vehicles, battery-electric cars and plug-in hybrids are cutting US gasoline use by 45 million gallons a year, which means Americans are already saving $100 million a year in refueling costs thanks to EVs. Now, imagine how those savings might look if startups like Aptera, Coda Automotive and Fisker Automotive had created hits instead of flops.

It's a solution that would please just about everyone, save Exxon. Find every American household that could theoretically get by with a plug-in vehicle, and make them buy 'em. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) and Consumers Union says about 45 million households – about 42 percent of all the households in the US - could drive plug-in vehicles with "little or no change" in their driving habits. And more than half of those could go on just as they are today if they drove battery-electr

Americans are about to spend a lot of money on gasoline. If the number crunchers at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) are correct, US drivers will spend a tidy $1.44 billion filling up for their Memorial Day travels as 31.2 million people use the long weekend to participate in the time-honored tradition of a road trip.

Something interesting happened after A123 Systems filed for bankruptcy last week: the plug-in vehicle industry circled the wagons. AutoblogGreen received press releases and statements from a variety of electric vehicle (EV) players that, when taken as a whole, seem to indicate this particular bankruptcy filing hit a little closer to home than when, say, Think exited stage right. The main message would make Douglas Adams proud: Don't panic. Fisker, for example, gets all of its batteries from A123

It's easy to understand that, if you power your vehicle with electricity, you don't need to use as much gasoline. But, how much do you actually save, in terms of fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions if you plug in instead of gas up?

Jim Kliesch, the Clean Vehicles Program research director for the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), is noticing a change. Instead of hyping marquee "green" cars, auto manufacturers are settling into a groove where they regularly show off packages of conventional fuel-saving methods that will allow them to bring more-efficient vehicles to market. These small changes add up to noticeable results, he said during an interview at the New York Auto Show last week, and that's important, since fuel e

In 2009, Business Car claimed that Toyota was still the world's greenest automaker. That same year, the folks at Dow Jones named BMW the greenest automaker for the fifth time in a row. Apparently, an organization's methodology has a lot to do with automakers winning titles like this over and over, since the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has just bestowed the Greenest Automaker Award on Honda, again for the fifth time in a row (the last time the award was given was in 2007).

In 2009, Business Car said Toyota was still the world's greenest automaker. That same year, Dow Jones named BMW the greenest automaker, again. Apparently, an organization's methodology has a lot to do with automakers winning titles like this over and over, since the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has just bestowed the Greenest Automaker Award on Honda for the fifth time in a row (the last time the award was given was in 2007). At least this time, the race was close: Toyota and Hyundai tied

Their UCS study, called Automaker Rankings 2007: The Environmental Performance of Car Companies, examined the emissions from every car made by eight car makers, representing 96% of cars and trucks sold in the US. The report lauds Honda for achieving the better-than-average smog scores in every class, while Toyota, which came in second, was praised for being the only manufacturer to improve its global warming performance every year since 2001. (Honda's environmentally-themed F1 team was left out

A small-town paper near where I grew up in Michigan recently published a long and detailed explanation on biomass energy. I poked around online a bit and found out it was taken from the Union of Concerned Scientists and, since the entire thing is available online, I thought I'd pass it along to AutoblogGreen readers interested in some of the details of how ethanol and biodiesel fit into the realm of biomass and other possibilities of turning plants into energy humans can use.